If you believed you could never be happy, would you go on living? That’s the question that echoed in Dr. Vivienne Ming’s mind when she contemplated killing herself, before she became a woman, mom, neuroscientist, technologist, and LGBT advocate. Dr. Ming shares more about the wisdom that saved her life, and how it led her to focus on the one superpower that predicts success over and over again.

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Vivienne: What’s very clear from my research and the research of many others is that endogenously (intrinsically) motivated people significantly outperform exogenously (extrinsically) motivated people. Now, exogenously motivated people, those are people who are sensitive to praise and punishment. They’re doing it to please their parents, to avoid getting fired, to get their bonus. It’s not to say they can’t be successful here and there, but across their life and across populations, if you do things for the incentives, you’re not really putting your whole self into it.

Majo: Are girls being socialized to have less intrinsic motivation?

Vivienne: I look at my daughter. She’s four. She has two moms. Both her moms are scientists. Most of the people we interact with are professional women, highly motivated, and yet, all of our daughters have gone through their princess phase. I hear so many parents say, “It wasn’t us. We didn’t do it. It must be biological. Those qualities are innate.” Let me give you a slightly different perspective, the perspective of someone who went through gender transition, overnight, right in the middle of their life.

I was suddenly, entirely aware that every bus and every billboard had a half-naked woman on it. For me to walk down the street and have it affect how I think about myself… Oh, God. I’m never going to be able to fit into that. God, what would it take to look like that… It was the strangest thing for me, that first time I was out and dressed as me. I had never cross-dressed in my life, so when I transitioned, that was it. It was that whole experience right there. And I just felt naked.

Majo: Wow.

Vivienne: Boy, did my brain switch really quickly. There was a day when I was walking down the street, really early on after my transition. I was pushing my then infant son in a stroller, and I passed two guys hitting a tennis ball back and forth at a tennis court. From behind, as I walked past them, I heard, “Hey, mom. The goods are looking good.” I was appalled! I wanted to turn around, march over, and slap that guy. I wanted to confront him! But I couldn’t because I couldn’t wipe the goddamn smile off my face.